


Attention

by Repeatinglitanies



Series: Twisted [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Historical AU, Possessive!Five, Scenes that may be deemed non-consensual, this is a work of fiction so please do not think this should ever work in reality, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Repeatinglitanies/pseuds/Repeatinglitanies
Summary: He had loved her since the moment he laid eyes on her.Vanya, however, did not.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Twisted [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801291
Comments: 18
Kudos: 148





	Attention

He had loved her since the moment he first laid eyes on her. Vanya, however, did not.

As a boy, Five had always known how to get what he wanted. One way or another, he found a way to achieve his goals. As far as he was concerned, the ends justified the means. So he wasn’t particularly picky about his methods. 

If there was a more efficient way to get one step closer to his aims, he would do it. If an impediment materialised in his path, he’d remove it. And he didn’t stop until he secured whatever it was that he needed to have.

Five took no particular pleasure in causing others harm or misfortune. But if they happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, then they were simply collateral damage.

It was just the way of the world. Especially for a fifth (and out of favour) son like him who had no chance of inheriting and was expected to make his own fortune. 

The only good thing that Reginald Hargreeves ever did for Five was securing an engagement contract with Vanya’s father, promising Vanya’s hand in marriage. In Five’s world, that meant they were as good as married. Because such a contract included a clause that penalised whichever party backed out of the arrangement. 

Hence, even if the world somehow turned upside down in the intervening years, Vanya’s father couldn’t renege on his promise to give Vanya to Five.

Had his father been a different man, Five might have been grateful. But Reginald Hargreeves was a hard man, even and most especially to his own children. The old man made sure that Five earned his keep, never failing to remind the fifth son that he slept under Hargreeves’ roof and ate the Hargreeves’ meals only at the old man’s sufferance.

But the old man treated all his sons the same way, even his ever steadfast first son and presumed heir. So Five had always shrugged it off as the way things were. His second brother Two, ever the rebellious one of the siblings, found fault with everything their father did, down to the old man’s choice of numerical names. 

At the time, Five was too busy working towards the future he imagined with a wife by his side that he never really listened to Two. Five simply didn’t have the time to care about unimportant things. Besides, there were worse names to be called by. 

But in hindsight, perhaps he should have paid more attention. The old man never did anyone any favours, even and especially his own sons.

Looking back, it was a mistake to have been engaged to Vanya through Reginald Hargreeves’ machinations (Five had no doubt there was something in it for the old man). Because it made Five complacent.

The engagement contract gave Five a false sense of security, creating a blind spot he never even thought of until it was too late. Five was so sure of a future with her that he failed to pay her enough attention. Instead, he focused on building his own fortune. One that could one day surpass his own father’s. What girl wouldn’t want a husband who had the means to keep her in a comfortable lifestyle?

Apparently, that girl would be Vanya.

Oh, Five had heard rumours about the people she kept company with. She loved music and would often use whatever coin her father would give her for her own personal use to pay musicians for their performance, whether it was actually good or not. 

She had even paid one to instruct her on an instrument called the violin. 

Five never did know whether she was any good or not. It wasn’t his concern. Vanya was free to pursue whatever caught her fancy as long as she was faithful.

But that was the problem wasn’t it? In Five’s eyes, a piece of paper was all that was needed to ensure a girl kept a promise made for her by her own father. But no one ever asked Vanya if she wanted the engagement or not.

Perhaps he should have tried talking to her all those times her family left them alone together. But Five was just happy to see that she was healthy and relatively content. 

To her credit, Vanya had tried to start numerous conversations to try to get to know her future husband. 

But to be honest, Five grew up in a household full of men. The only women in the house were servants who didn’t know how to read or write and (to Five’s eyes) beneath his notice. 

His eyes had only ever been just for her. There had never been any other to catch his attention. All she ever had to do was offer her a plate of food, something she called a sandwich, and smile. And that was all it took to capture his fancy ever since.

But he never did know how to speak to a girl like Vanya. 

No one could ever call Five taciturn. He was not one to keep his opinions to himself. But in Vanya’s presence, words failed to form in his mouth. And all he could manage were short, one-word replies.

In Five’s mind, he bore the brunt of the blame. He shouldn’t have neglected her, left her to her own devices. 

He gave the impression that he could be made a fool of, which was exactly what he felt like when he heard the news that Vanya had run away. With a man she had commissioned to make her violin.

In a bid to save face (and also to try to escape having to pay Reginald Hargreeves compensation for a breach of contract), Vanya’s father immediately disowned her. She was no one’s daughter now.

If only Five could feel the same way. 

He knew he should. There were many other women out there. Some more beautiful, more accomplished, more universally desirable than Vanya.

But they weren’t Vanya. And while strived to be the best at everything he put his mind into doing. Five never was one to let go.

It wasn’t hard to track them down. He found the thief at the tavern, drinking alcohol he probably used Vanya’s coins to pay for. Five vaguely recalled that the thief had a name. Leonard or Harold or whatever. But that didn’t really matter to Five.

His quest to build a great fortune lead him to develop many contacts. Some were reputable while others could be said to be shadier than the dark side of the moon. The former were the ones to inform him of this scandal while the latter helped him deal with the thief.

Five would have wanted a more direct hand with this weasel’s ultimate fate. But he had other concerns. With that in mind, he went up the stairs, where the rooms rented out to travelers were situated. He already knew which one Vanya resided in before he even stepped foot in the tavern. Money had a way of loosening people’s tongues.

All he intended was to wake her up and drag her out of there. Five had been so focused on getting her back, the planning of how to go about it and the logistics of it that he hadn’t actually thought about what he was going to do when he had her.

But all his thoughts fled him when he entered the room and spotted a pale shoulder by the light of a lamp. Vanya was asleep and naked beneath the covers.

Five didn’t know what came over him.

However, all he could think about was how she had let that thief, that nobody touch her. She was his and she had chosen to give herself to somebody else.

He barely registered her cries and pleas to stop. She tried to fight him off of her, tried to get him out of her. But he was a monster to her that night, alternating licks, bites and sucks as he repeatedly thrust into her.

When it was done, she had curled into a ball and sobbing, her whole body facing away from him as he righted himself, putting his clothes and composure back on.

“Dress yourself. You’re coming with me.”

Five was proud of how his tone didn’t betray how much his loss of control had shaken him. 

Despite himself, he had made a move he could never take back. He regretted the fear and pain he caused her. But there was a part of him that didn’t. After all, Vanya had to be punished for her infidelity. 

He was a fool to assume he could ever consider her a partner for the future he had intended to build for the both of them. And he should certainly just throw her out onto the streets to starve or sell her body to the highest bidder. 

But the thought of anyone touching her in any way made his gut clench and his blood boil.

So instead of entering his newly built house as his bride, she entered it no better than a slave.

Vanya always refused him. But she was under the delusion that her wishes would ever truly be heard at this point. She forfeited that right when she chose to betray him.

He couldn’t stand her tears or her moans of pain though.

So he made sure to assign her the most grueling of tasks each day. It was partly punishment. And partly to make sure she was too tired to protest when he came to her at night.

Whenever he had the time to reflect on it, he sometimes wondered who was the master and who was the slave.

Because while he ordered her to use her hands to scrub his floors and launder his clothes by day, he never lost the desire to take her in his arms and embrace her. Not just for sex. But just to enjoy the feeling of being close to her.

Even when laid so low, Vanya could somehow still smile and find what should have been meagre (if any) joy in living. 

She only ever did it when she thought he was away or otherwise occupied. And he could have sworn his heart skipped a beat at the sight.

When she finally placed her arms around him in the throes of what he was doing to her, Five thought of extending an olive branch. Offer to make her his wife, instead of his servant.

But that mad thought eventually left him as soon as she started crying (as she always did) afterwards.

Sometimes it made him unbearably sad. But most of the time, it made him unfathomably angry. Five didn’t like losing.

But more than that, didn’t she realise that he came to her every night like a supplicant, begging for whatever small scrap she would give him? Why couldn’t she just pretend to like him? All she had to do was put her arms around him, and he was more than ready to bend on one knee and make her his wife. If she had decided to kiss him, he imagined he would have given her the moon had she truly desired it.

However, she just lay there and took whatever he gave as if she was simply a receptacle for all his desires and frustrations.

It should have sickened him. But it didn’t. He doubted he ever will tire of her.

She was curled up in a ball facing away from him again. But this time, there were no more sobs or hiccups. She very well might have gone back to sleep. 

She had probably just grown accustomed to it. 

After righting his clothes, he silently made his way out of her room. 

He never noticed the smile gracing Vanya’s lips, a smile secure in the knowledge that he would be back. 

Because she now had what she’d always wanted after all these years: his attention.

Vanya hadn’t planned to encircle his frame with her arms tonight. She had to keep up appearances that she was unwilling. How else could she make him want her more?

But she couldn’t find it in herself to truly regret it. After all, all it took this time for him spill himself inside her was an embrace. She wondered what a kiss would do? 

Vanya made a note to try it in the future. Not too soon though. But definitely, in the future.


End file.
